A Christmas Tempest
by The Downton Historian
Summary: A Christmas tempest carries Robert through grief and rage to a place of love and intimacy. Part of the 2015 Cobert Holiday Fanfic Exchange
1. Chapter 1

He hated Mama.

He hated her for doing this to Cora. Again.

The same shots had been fired before, and he supposed he and Cora both knew that at some point during the Christmas Eve dinner conversation they'd hear about their—or according to Mama— _Cora's_ evident failure to conceive an heir. The whole blasted holiday was about the birth of a baby boy after all.

And yet knowing the enemy's offensive strategy did little to assuage the instant searing, and subsequent, excruciating ache caused by the assaults.

Robert gazed at the reflection of the fire's flames licking and slapping the sides of his nearly empty whiskey glass and replayed in his mind Cora's curt, tear-laden words to him.

"You didn't fight for me, Robert. You had the chance, and you didn't."

He had protested, of course. He'd sighed, and placed a comforting hand on the back of her shoulder. But she pulled away, continued up the staircase, and left him standing there, smoldering in his own loathing for his inability to relieve her pain.

 _No,_ _he didn't fight for her._

Perhaps out of defeat or resignation, or perhaps out of sheer emotional exhaustion, he did not— _could not_ —do battle. Not today.

He didn't dare tell Mama that Cora had been with child roughly six months before.

He didn't dare tell her that their hopes had been so short-lived.

That those hopes came crumbling down on the 24th of September.

What good would it do, anyway?

To Mama, Cora would only appear more incapable, even more unsuitable for the role of Countess.

And though her compassion occasionally surfaced, Mama was never known to be particularly sympathetic.

And so he remained silent, and prayed for Cora's fortitude—as well as his own.

But like every time before, it wasn't quite enough.

After draining his glass Robert was desperate for another distraction, so he picked up the burgundy-colored book resting on the side table.

It was once a favorite tradition of his to read _A Christmas Carol_ by Charles Dickens each year, but recent estate business had kept him away from the solitary intimacy of the library.

He sighed, flipped to the ribbon-marked page, and tried to concentrate on the words before him.

 _But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, chartable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and no another race of creature bound on other journeys._

The sound of the door clicking shut pulled him from his temporary reprieve. He didn't have to look up from the page to know it was Mama. He could distinguish her footsteps anywhere: heavy for her delicate frame, swift, and always firmly in rhythm.

He could hear her pouring herself a glass of whiskey behind him with her usual precision, but oh, her presence alone was enough to make the muscle fibers between his shoulder blades tighten. With each tedious moment he felt another layer of fibers constrict, compact, and compress onto the growing knot of tension, as if building a defense against the inevitable assailments that would fly from her direction.

He desperately studied the fading print on the page to block her presence from his already seething mind. He urged his eyes through the motions, hoping that, if anything, the methodic movement might calm him.

Left to right, left to right.

 _For God's sake, get it together, man!_

Left to right, left to right.

Left to right, left to—

– _Oh, to hell with it all!_

Violet was behind him now, leering down over his shoulder. After glancing at the page for a few moments, she remarked plainly, "Ah, yes, Dickens. Why use a few words when you can spout several hundred to describe the buttering of bread?"

Robert cringed.

Her fiery whiskey breath grazed the hairs of his neck, shocking them erect and disturbing the bundled mass of stress and anxiety in his shoulders and neck. He slapped the book shut and clenched his jaw, forcefully pressing his tongue against the back of his teeth.

He was far too cross. He knew he shouldn't speak. He mustn't. He mustn't free his tongue _._

But the tension that had been building since the moment they sat down to dinner was too much.

"You would know, Mama." He hissed almost inaudibly.

"I beg your pardon, Robert?"

He twisted his torso and peered up at her through narrowed eyes from his place on the couch.

"You certainly never appear to be at a loss for words, Mama. Particularly when it comes to criticizing Cora."

Violet straightened, lifted her chin, and pressed her lips into a determined line.

"It's been nearly a year, Robert. I was simply pointing out the fact that she–"

"You think us unaware?!" he barked before she could finish. He stood now, book still in hand, but blazing as fiercely and suddenly as the fire just after the log had fallen.

"You think we don't realize the severity of our situation?! You think we aren't devastated each month!? You think we want it to be like this?! You think we aren't _trying?!_ "

Violet pursed her lips, and then opened her mouth to respond, but Robert was quicker.

"For God's sake, Mama, _it's Christmas_!"

Remembering the book still tight in his grip, he raised it for her to see. He shook it for emphasis as he continued his tirade, knowing fully well that she was familiar with the timeless tale.

"The one time of the year when you're supposed to soften your heart and not patronize or criticize others. The _one time_ to show goodwill! And you insist on reminding Cora of how inadequate you believe her to be. Enough, Mama—we've had quite _enough_! I must go. I cannot bear to be in your presence anymore this evening. Goodnight."

He wasn't sure where he was going. A raging tempest of a blizzard was blowing outside, but he didn't care at this point. He needed to get out. He needed to breathe.

As he turned to storm out of the room, Robert hurled the book at the couch with such great force that it rebounded off the cushion and clattered violently to the floor.

And for the first time in a long, long time, the Countess of Grantham was left speechless.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N After working and reworking this story several times, I decided to craft it into a 3-part series rather than 2. Things do get brighter, I promise, but for now, here's a bit of icy _King Lear_ -inspired angst.**

The snow and ice plummeted from the sky in torrents. This wasn't the ordinary late December snowfall that floated and fluttered, and left a soft, glowing, picturesque layer of white on the Yorkshire landscape. No, this was the kind of storm that severed entire limbs off of centuries-old Rowan trees and blew the thatched roofs off of cottages.

The ice tore into Robert's face with such ferocity he was sure there'd be blood. He imagined his retreat was more like a head-on charge into airborne shattered glass than a walk across the lawn. And yet still he trudged onward towards Jackdaw's Castle—the folly that had served as his sanctuary since he was a young chap. Whether he was flying from the (well-deserved) blame for Mama's broken vases, or, later, evading an insufferable tea or luncheon with a promising bachelorette Mama had hand-selected, the folly had always been a place where he could seek refuge and solace.

Now, he returned as a man; a man who had been knocked about by Life's cruel fist.

There was a time not so long ago when he was down on his knees every night, praying every mighty prayer he could think of to save the failing estate and keep it from slipping from Papa's and his grasp. He experienced a moment's reprieve once he married Cora and Downton was safe, but this marriage, designed out of pragmatism and convenience, had evolved into something far more intricate and exquisitely intimate—a turbulent shift in course Robert was still struggling to navigate. And now there was the grief for what would not be, and for what he as a man, as a husband, could not do.

The whiskey he drank earlier propelled these muddled thoughts from the center of his head to his temples. What began as a slow, constant pulsing became a ferocious, clamoring thrash against his skull.

Beating and bashing, beating and bashing.

Though his body was growing numb, he continued to feel so sharply, so keenly, the throbs of anguish inside his head.

And he could no longer bear it.

"Go on, then!" he bellowed out to the night air, though he could hardly see through the cascade of white tumbling down.

"Blow, winds! Crack my cheeks!" he demanded, taking a few large steps forward and turning to his right. He looked about frantically, as if seeking the source of the great tempest.

"Rage! Blow!" He kicked at the snow and sent a wave of it flying forward, intimidating the storm. Daring it to fight back with a stronger fury.

He pivoted to his left and continued to rebuke the sky from the other side.

"Go on!" he bellowed, "Singe my head!" He threw his arms up and outward, beckoning it. Begging it.

"Spit, ice!" Spout, sleet and snow! Here I stand, your slave! Go on! I am but a weary man."

Damn Mama and her refusal to relent just this once. Couldn't she see how it affected Cora? How the brilliance of her blue eyes and rose of her cheeks would give way to an ashen pallor at the very mention of a child?

Couldn't she _see_?!

She didn't know the whole of their tragedy, but surely she could see!

Damn her.

Damn Mama's sadism that caused Cora such immobilizing grief and shame.

Damn his own incapacity to fully understand her anguish—though he knew he probably never could. Cora's heart was so complexly and deeply fractured, and it was entirely unique to her.

As an American and expatriate.

As a woman, a wife.

As the one assigned the burden of carrying forth the Grantham legacy.

As the one who almost did.

 _Oh, God, damn it all!_

But above all, damn his own inability to comfort her—especially tonight on Christmas Eve.

 _Their first Christmas Eve together._

Robert halted his angry march through the snow and cursed the wind and ice that tried to silence his wails upon this realization.

The fury he felt raging against his temples descended to the backs of his eyes and stung them. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes to relieve the pressure. Tears mixed with the falling precipitation and streamed down his cheeks and into his necktie. He tried to swallow the lump that had formed in his throat—only for it to lodge in his chest, and sit with a heaviness he never knew before now.


End file.
